She can't even resist...
A common form of punishment in animated shows that involves stretching a character's face on either side. Generally done to imitate a smile (usually to the Comically Serious member of the cast for maximum humiliation) done out of frustration by one character towards another, or as a form of restraint. Optional "Gwwwommm" sound effect, and while not always done to the Rubber Man, the general idea is the same.
Compare Finger-Forced Smile, Flapping Cheeks, Squish the Cheeks.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- After exchanging hats at the end of the Cupid's Day festival in one of the rare lighthearted and tender moments of Code Geass, Shirley combines this with an Almost Kiss on an unsuspecting Lelouch.
- In The Daichis - Earth's Defense Family episode 2, after Seiko is crying when seeing her son, Dai unconscious after their first mission. She pulls Dai's left cheek to an extreme exaggerated looking degree after he comments about her large breasts.
- In episode 7 and 92 of Fairy Tail Lucy angrily pinches Happy's cheeks.
- In the FAKE OVA, Ryo stops a horny Dee and stretches his face out, making what one fan dubbed the "Gumby Face."
- Food Wars!: At the end of the Regiment de Cuisine, Erina pulls Soma's cheeks while lecturing him for doing what he wanted and throwing her whole plan off, though she accepts they only won thanks to him doing exactly that.
- GTO: The Early Years: In Chapter 206, Eikichi teases Saejima for being the comic relief and stretches his cheeks.
- One of the lighter moments of Gunslinger Girl has Giuseppe grab Henrietta's cheek and stretch it out because "I felt like it", though it's actually because she reminds him of his dead little sister, who he used to do the same thing to.
- Pictured above is Haruhi of Haruhi Suzumiya doing this to punish Mikuru, for not following her nonsensical baseball signals in "The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya".
- K-On!:
- Mio and Ritsu do this to each other after Yui announces she wants to join the Light Music Club after all.
- Mio does it again as punishment to Ritsu after the latter forgot to turn in their club application in episode 5 of season 1.
- During the culture festival arc of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Kashiwagi teases her boyfriend about how he first asked her out, causing him to get flustered and start pulling on her cheeks to get her to stop. In the manga, it's played rather realistically, but the anime exaggerates it for comedic effect with her cheeks bouncing around after he lets go before snapping back into place.
- Lyrical Nanoha: Done by Alisa on Nanoha when she gets annoyed at the lead character's Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life monologue during the first episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
- My Lovely Ghost Kana:
- Kana does it twice to Daikichi at the end of volume 2. Both times, it makes poor Utako scream in horror, as she's not aware of Kana's existence and only sees Daikichi's face getting suddenly deformed for no apparent reason.
- Kana can stretch her own face in a similar manner, and uses this face to prank people, especially young kids.
- Happens many, many times in Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Usually Asuna to Negi, or Kotaro and Ayaka to each other. Chachamaru uses this to cancel Negi's spellcasting.
- As Monkey D. Luffy of One Piece actually is a Rubber Man, it's no surprise that this happens to him a lot. This is actually how he demonstrates it most of the time, including the first time it comes up.
Nami: "Rubber man"?
Luffy: (pulls his cheek out about a foot) Yeah, see? - In the Onegai My Melody In episode 9 entitled "I Wish I Could do a lot of Rope Jumps!" You can see at the end of the episode in a short sequence how both protagonist Uta Yumeno and her friend Mana Fujisaki start to stretch each other's faces, Uta's platonic love and antagonist from the first season Keiichi Hiiragi sees them to Uta's horror who ends up being the one with the stretched face.
- Pokémon the Series:
- One of the more memorable scenes in Pokémon: The Original Series has a certain electric mon fall victim to this by several school children. Here's a hint for what happens next: Red spots on its cheeks are full of dischargeable electricity.
- In "Mountain Time", Jessie does this to Wobbuffet after they disagree on whether a Pokémon had just used Teleport to return them onto the balanced rock.
- In the Pokémon the Series: Black & White anime, Iris tends to pinch the cheeks of pudgy Pokémon like Tepig and Dawn's Piplup.
- One of the more memorable scenes in Pokémon: The Original Series has a certain electric mon fall victim to this by several school children. Here's a hint for what happens next: Red spots on its cheeks are full of dischargeable electricity.
- Ranma ½: Ranma often does this to Ryoga out of fits of jealousy when he sees Ryoga and Akane together in what appears to be a romantic moment between the two of them.
- Read or Die:
- In the manga, Nenene does this a few times to Yomiko when frustrated.
- Nancy does this playfully to Yomiko in the OVA, as well.
- And in the anime, Yomiko tried to do it to Anita to ease her nervousness. Anita was not amused.
- Michelle does that from time to time to herself, after she does something stupid.
- Holo does this to herself early on in the Spice and Wolf anime; while explaining that wolves don't have cheeks (which is why they can't chew their food), she adds a visual aid.
- Tomo-chan Is a Girl!: Misuzu's favorite method of punishment for Carol for her shenanigans involves pulling on her cheeks. When they meet for the first time, Misuzu's own mother also does it.
- Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- and ×××HOLiC:
- The Mokonas can have their whole bodies stretched out like this, usually with the sound effect.
- Fai once tried to make Kurogane look less grumpy by doing this to him. It didn't work.
- Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!: When Hana brings Shinichi to visit her house for the first time and meet her mother Tsuki, at one point Tsuki calls Hana to come over, and begins pulling her cheeks as she scolds her for not telling that her senpai was a guy. Shinichi for his part seems to enjoy seeing Hana getting punished.
- Yotsuba&!: Fuuka does this to Yotsuba in Volume 13. It's a realistic version, where Yotsuba's face doesn't stretch that far, and Fuuka is only imitating something she knows both she and Yotsuba have seen on cartoons. She obviously doesn't intend to hurt a 5-year-old.
Art
- A very old (and very disturbing) Japanese shunga painting shows a man stretching his face out vertically one way and horizontally another.
Films — Animated
- In Turning Red, when one of Mei's aunties pinch her cheeks it stretches to three times its normal size.
Films — Live-Action
- The King of Comedy: Robert De Niro's face gets given a good workout from an expert: Jerry Lewis.
- Men In Black: Played for horror-comedy: the Big Bad alien has just messily murdered and hollowed out an abusive husband. His disguise isn't perfect — the wife notices his skin is literally hanging off his bones. His response is to yank it back like a really creepy cartoon.
- Done on Osmosis Jones by the title character to Da Chief.
- Twice in UHF.
- George Newman's aunt pulls on his cheek until it's nowhere near the rest of his face to get him to smile for her friends.
- George sticks his fingers in his friend Bob's mouth in order to yank it into a smile.
Literature
- Used frequently in both A Certain Magical Index and its sister series A Certain Scientific Railgun, with Index and Kuroko usually being the ones on the receiving end.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In volume 2 (episode 9 of the anime), after getting a bunch of bowshell spikes in the ass in a mishap, Guy grabs Katie's face and starts stretching it side-to-side since she had picked the route that got them there.
Video Games
- Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: An secret anime segment shows Flonne doing this to Laharl.
- GrandiaII: Ryudo does this to Elena shortly before the dungeon containing Valmar's Tongue.
- While not exactly the same, Sora does this to Riku in Kingdom Hearts I upon running into him since the first time they were separated as a way of seeing if he's real.
- Mirai does this to Hibiri in a certain CG on the Hebijo storyline of Senran Kagura Burst.
- The title screen to Super Mario 64 lets you stretch out various aspects of Mario's face and hold them in place for hilarious results. Perhaps as a nod to this, one minigame in Mario Party involves doing this to another character's face and trying to match it as closely as possible to a given image.
- The Touhou Project fan movie
that depicts the meeting of Yukari and Yuyuko has Chen doing this on Yukari in an attempt to cheer her up.
Visual Novels
- In the Ace Attorney games quite a few shocked expressions and meltdowns include this, though it's a slight variation as they are self-inflicted.
- In Madou Shouhei Kleinhasa, Lulun does this to Roze in one scene.
- During his route in the visual novel Sweet Fuse: At Your Side, Shidou pulls on Saki's cheeks to see her smile.
Western Animation
- Porky Pig: In "Porky's Tire Trouble", Porky's dog follows him to work at the tire factory and falls into a rubberizing solution. The dog proceeds to manipulate his face into the forms of celebrities of the day.
- Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?: After being unmasked as the Gator Man, the poetry slam promoter gets pulled several times on the sides of his mouth in an elastic fashion by an old lady he stole some books from as she reprimands him for the theft.
- The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror V": In one of the bad futures that Homer creates, Ned Flanders takes over the world and puts everyone in smile machines that mechanically do this via hooks. "Now remember everyone, BIIIIIIIG Smiles!"
- Homer: (to another hooked smiler) "What the hell are YOU smilin' at?"